How to write a leadership development plan for your organization
A leadership development plan is a written roadmap that links the leadership behaviors your organization needs to the development each leader will receive. To write one, start from business strategy, assess where leaders are today, set a few behavior goals per person, choose experiences that build them, add coaching support and review progress every quarter.
This guide is written for human resources (HR) and learning and development (L&D) leaders who run leadership development as a program, not as a folder of templates. It covers what goes into a plan, how to write it step by step, what a finished plan looks like and how coaching turns the plan into lasting behavior change.
What is a leadership development plan?
A leadership development plan is a structured document that sets out which leadership capabilities a leader will build, how they will build them, who supports them and how progress will be measured. It works best at two levels: a program plan owned by HR and L&D, and an individual plan for each leader inside it.
The program plan answers the organization's questions. Which leadership behaviors does the strategy depend on, and which leaders come first? The individual plan answers the leader's questions: what will I practice and how will I know it is working?
An individual plan without a program behind it depends on one leader's motivation and one manager's goodwill. A program without individual plans treats every leader the same, which ignores how differently leaders grow. A leadership development plan is not a performance improvement plan either. It is forward looking and built around potential, not a record of what went wrong.
Why does your organization need a leadership development plan?
Your organization needs a leadership development plan because the demands on leaders are rising and their development has to keep pace. A written plan turns good intentions into a funded, measured commitment, so development happens every quarter rather than only when budgets allow.
The pressure shows up first in manager engagement. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report found that global manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% between 2024 and 2025, the largest year-over-year drop in manager engagement, part of a nine-point fall since 2022. The same report shows the drop is not inevitable: in best-practice organizations, 79% of managers were engaged at work in 2025.
HR leaders see the gap. In the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) research released in March 2025, more than 51% of chief human resources officers (CHROs) named leadership and manager development among their top priorities for 2025, while about a third of workers reported poor management and ineffective senior leadership.
The skills leaders need are also shifting. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that employers expect 39% of workers' core skills to change by 2030, and that leadership and social influence saw the most substantial increase in importance of the skills the report highlights, up 22 percentage points compared with the 2023 edition. Meanwhile, the demand for leaders keeps growing. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects about 1.1 million openings each year, on average, in management occupations from 2025 to 2035.
Artificial intelligence (AI) adds a further layer. In Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index, 47% of leaders listed upskilling existing employees as a top workforce strategy for the next 12 to 18 months. Leaders will be asked to guide that change, so their own development cannot wait.
What should a leadership development plan include?
A leadership development plan should include the business goal it serves, the leadership behaviors that matter, a baseline assessment, specific goals, development experiences, named support, a timeline and measures. Each part answers a question a leader or sponsor will ask, which keeps the plan practical rather than aspirational.
The table below sets out each component, the question it answers and an example for a newly promoted team leader.
| Component | Question it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Business goal | Why does this development matter now? | Faster decisions in a growing customer operations team |
| Target behaviors | What should the leader do differently? | Delegate decisions with clear boundaries; give direct feedback weekly |
| Baseline | Where is the leader today? | 360-degree feedback from team, peers and manager |
| Goals | What will change, and by when? | Two behavior goals, reviewed each quarter |
| Development experiences | How will the leader build the behaviors? | Stretch project, short course on feedback, one-to-one coaching |
| Support | Who helps along the way? | Line manager, a peer group and a certified coach |
| Measures | How will we know it is working? | Repeat 360 feedback, team engagement score, time to decision |
| Review rhythm | When do we check and adjust? | Monthly check-ins, quarterly review with the sponsor |
Source: CoachHub editorial team, October 2026.
How do you write a leadership development plan?
You write a leadership development plan in seven steps: link it to strategy, define the behaviors that matter, assess each leader, set a few learning goals, choose development experiences, build support around the leader and agree on how progress will be measured. The steps work for a whole program and for one leader.
1. Start from the business strategy
Begin with the decisions and changes the business must get right over the life of the current strategy. A growth plan needs leaders who can hire and delegate. A transformation needs leaders who can hold teams steady through uncertainty. Hot tip: write the business goal at the top of the plan so every later choice can be traced back to it.
2. Define the leadership behaviors that matter
Translate strategy into observable behaviors, not abstract competencies. "Strategic thinking" is hard to coach. "Sets quarterly priorities with the team and says no to work outside them" is not. Keep the list short enough that every leader can remember it and every manager can observe it. CoachHub's overview of key leadership behaviors is a useful starting point for this conversation with senior leaders.
3. Assess where each leader is today
A baseline makes goals honest. Combine a self-assessment with 360-degree feedback from the people who work with the leader every day, then add performance data where it exists. Share results privately and frame them as a starting point. Leaders who see the assessment as a judgment tend to defend themselves rather than change.
4. Set two or three learning goals per leader
Fewer goals get more attention. Write each one as a behavior the leader will practice and a sign that it is working. Agree at the start how progress will show up in daily work, such as the way the leader runs team discussions or handles a difficult conversation, so the manager can review it in regular one-on-one meetings. Share each goal with the leader's coach and line manager so everyone works toward the same thing. Leadership development goal examples can help with the wording.
5. Choose development experiences that fit each goal
Match the experience to what the leader needs. Knowledge gaps call for training or reading. Judgment grows through stretch assignments, such as leading a cross-functional project. Behavior change needs repeated practice with feedback, which is where one-to-one coaching comes in. Coach-led group coaching brings together peers facing the same challenges and sits alongside one-to-one coaching.
6. Build support around the leader
A 2025 study in the Scandinavian Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology followed 59 managers through leadership training and found that transfer was facilitated by support from superior management and managerial colleagues and hindered by role stressors. Managers' readiness for change also improved transfer. Name the leader's sponsor, involve their line manager in goal setting and protect time for practice, or the plan will lose to the day job.
7. Agree on how progress will be measured and reviewed
Decide the measures before development begins. Use leading indicators, such as goal progress and repeat feedback, alongside lagging indicators, such as engagement and internal promotion. For coaching-specific options, start with coaching effectiveness metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) and adapt them to the plan. Hold a monthly check-in with the leader and a quarterly review with the sponsor.
What does a leadership development plan look like?
A good leadership development plan is short enough to review in a single meeting. It names the leader, the business goal, a small set of behavior goals, the experiences and support for each goal and the dates for review. The example below shows a 12-month individual plan for a newly promoted sales manager inside a wider program.
| Plan element | What it says |
|---|---|
| Leader and role | Priya, first-time sales manager leading eight account executives |
| Business goal | Grow revenue from existing accounts while the team doubles in size |
| Goal 1 | Coach, rather than rescue, account executives on stalled deals; team closes more deals without her stepping in |
| Goal 2 | Run a weekly pipeline meeting that ends with owners and next steps; forecast accuracy improves by the second quarter |
| Experiences | Lead the onboarding of two new hires; short course on sales forecasting; one-to-one coaching every three weeks |
| Support | Regional director as sponsor; peer group of new managers; certified coach |
| Measures | 360 feedback at months 0 and 12; team engagement pulse; forecast accuracy; deals closed without manager intervention |
| Review dates | Monthly with her manager; quarterly with the sponsor; full review at month 12 |
Source: illustrative example, CoachHub editorial team, October 2026.
Notice what the plan leaves out. There is no long list of competencies and no library of courses. Every goal is a behavior and every behavior is paired with an experience and a person who helps build it.
How does coaching support a leadership development plan?
Coaching supports a leadership development plan by turning goals on paper into new behavior at work. A coach helps the leader reflect on what happened and commit to what they will try next. Training delivers knowledge; coaching drives the behavior change the plan is written to achieve.
Plans often stall in the gap between a development session and Monday morning. The leader returns to a full inbox and old habits take over. Regular coaching sessions close that gap. Each session starts with what the coachee tried since the last one and ends with a concrete action for the week ahead.
Employers are building this support into their programs. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) 2025 Global Coaching Study found that nearly six in ten coaching clients are now sponsored by their employers. That makes employer sponsorship the majority case, which is a reason to build coaching into the plan rather than leave it to individual initiative.
Coaching also works at every level of the plan. A first-time manager might use sessions to stop doing the work and start leading it, while a senior leader works through a high-stakes decision. Digital coaching makes this possible at scale, so a leader in a regional office can get the same quality of support as one at headquarters. For more on how coaching builds leaders over time, read CoachHub's guide to leadership development coaching.
How do you measure whether a leadership development plan is working?
You measure a leadership development plan by tracking behavior change first and business results second. Compare 360-degree feedback and goal progress at the start and end of each cycle, then look for movement in team engagement, retention, internal promotion and the business goal the plan was written to serve.
Attendance and satisfaction scores tell you that people took part. They do not tell you whether anyone leads differently. Build the measures into the plan from day one, so the baseline exists when you need it. A CoachHub guide to metrics that prove leadership development impact covers measurement in more depth. For a program-wide view, group results by leadership level and by business unit, which shows where the plan is working and where leaders need more support. CoachHub's page on the return on investment (ROI) of coaching shows how behavior change can be connected to business outcomes.
Review the plan itself once a year. Strategy shifts, and the behaviors the business needs will shift with it.
How CoachHub supports your leadership development plan
A leadership development plan sets the direction. Coaching is what helps leaders follow it. CoachHub partners with HR and L&D teams to add coaching to the plans they already run, from first-time managers to the executive team.
CoachHub is "trusted by over 1,000 organizations worldwide" and "has more than 3,500 certified coaches across 90+ countries and coaching available in over 80 languages", according to its about us page. Coach matching pairs each coachee with a coach who fits their goals. AIMY™, CoachHub's AI coach, extends coaching to employees who do not yet have a personal coach, and it is designed to support human coaching, never to replace it.
If you are building or refreshing your plan, explore how a coaching-based leadership development program can turn each leader's goals into measurable behavior change.
FAQ
An individual plan should run long enough for a leader to practice new behaviors and see them show up in repeat feedback, and short enough to keep goals relevant. Hold a check-in every month and a formal review every quarter. A program-level plan should follow the horizon of the business strategy it serves.
There is no single agreed model. A practical way to think about it is five phases: assess where the leader is, set goals, develop through experiences and coaching, apply the new behaviors at work and review progress. The phases repeat, because each review sets the goals for the next cycle.
The leader owns their individual plan, because they are the one who has to change. HR and L&D own the program: the behaviors, the experiences on offer, the coaching partner and the measures. The line manager and a senior sponsor share accountability for making time and giving feedback.
A leadership development plan builds capability for the future and is offered to leaders the organization wants to grow. A performance improvement plan addresses a specific shortfall in current performance within a set time. Mixing the two makes development feel like a warning, so keep them separate.
Yes. Plans for emerging leaders focus on the behaviors they will need in their first leadership role, such as giving feedback and leading a small project. Starting early gives the organization a stronger pipeline and gives future managers a smoother transition.
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